The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the inventors hereof, to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
The present disclosure relates generally to data decoding, and more particularly to iterative decoders for data encoded with a low density parity check (LDPC) encoder.
LDPC codes and decoders that are used to decode LDPC codes may be used in numerous applications and devices. For example, data storage, satellite communications, wireless communications, wire-line communications, and power-line communications are applications that may each use LDPC codes and LDPC decoders. Devices such as digital camera flash memory storage, satellites, mobile phones, and other mobile devices may also each use LDPC codes and LDPC decoders.
LDPC codes may be used for correcting errors and erasures in information transmitted in a noisy communications or data storage channel. The information may be encoded (by a LDPC encoder) prior to transmission and then subsequently decoded (by a LDPC decoder) when received. Traditional LDPC decoders typically decode codewords that are comprised of non-erased bits. However, in addition to errors, or in presence of no errors, sometimes a set of symbols in the codeword has been erased such that reduction of this set of erased symbols is not easily achievable using standard LDPC algorithms such as message passing algorithms or linear programming methods.